Manage Facebook contact sync in your organization

Applies To: Office 365 Small Business AdminOffice 365 operated by 21Vianet - Small Business AdminMore...Less

Facebook contact synchronization lets people set up a connection between their Facebook account and the work or school account they use for Office 365 by using Outlook Web App. After they set up a Facebook connection, all of their Facebook friends are listed as contacts in People in in Office 365. They can then interact with their Facebook friends as they do with their other contacts.

Facebook contact sync is turned on by default if the feature is available in your region.

Tip: As an admin, you probably want to keep Facebook contact sync turned on if your organization uses Facebook for business purposes, such as networking and marketing. Turn it off if you don’t want your users to download their Facebook friends as contacts in Outlook Web App.

Note: The features that are available to your Office 365 organization are determined by the service plan for your account. Some features aren’t available to mailboxes or organizations in specific regions.

Manage Facebook contact sync

Go to Admin > Service settings > Email, calendar, and contacts.

Do one of the following:

Turn on Facebook contact sync to let people set up a connection with Facebook.

Turn off Facebook contact sync to prevent people from setting up a connection with Facebook.

Warning: If you turn off Facebook contact sync, keep these things in mind:

It may take up to two weeks for all connections to Facebook to be removed, and for Facebook contacts to be deleted from your users’ work and school accounts.

All connections that your users may have established with Facebook using Outlook Web App will be removed. Also, the contact for each of their Facebook friends is deleted from their work and school accounts.

What else do I need to know?

The information for each Facebook friend is stored as a read-only contact record in the Facebook folder in People. The information that is synchronized between Facebook and Outlook Web App includes first name, last name, all phone numbers, all email addresses, and all physical addresses. Facebook contacts are stored in the user’s mailbox and are retained in accordance with the Office 365 service agreement.

During the Outlook Web App and Facebook connection setup, the contacts in the user’s default contacts folder are uploaded to Facebook as part of a one-time synchronization with Facebook. Facebook uses this contact information as part of the “People you may know” friend suggestions on Facebook. The one-time upload of information also allows Facebook to include the contact information for your users’ Facebook friends and Outlook Web App contacts in Facebook applications that they may choose to use, for example, mobile phone applications.